


three words that became hard to say

by joshllyman



Category: The West Wing
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19181215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: Five times Josh Lyman says he hates Sam Seaborn, and one time he doesn't.





	three words that became hard to say

1- _when at first i learned to speak,_ _i used all my words to fight_

Josh has never had high expectations of anything or anyone but himself.

It’s hard to, he imagines, when your sister dies when you’re eight years old. The blaze that had taken nearly everything from him now licks constantly at his heels, spurring him forward, further, higher, faster. There was never any choice except to be the best he possibly could, because despite what his parents, his therapist, his rabbi (when he was still doing that) tell him, he knows without a shadow of a doubt that what had happened to Joanie was his fault, and if you’re gonna kill your sister you can at least be a functional replacement for a child.

Yeah, alright, maybe he should listen to his therapist more.

Anyway, he gets into Harvard, and his parents are impossibly proud, and it’s only a few hours away, which his mother loves because it means he can come home whenever he wants. There’s a party that his teachers all attend and tell him how bright he is and how far he’s gonna go and Josh smiles and nods and does all the things a real boy would do, but his heart isn’t in it. He doesn’t really have friends, so there aren’t any of those there. Friends of his parents, but that’s all.

He puts his graduation money into savings and uses the allowance he’s saved over the last few years to buy a few things for his dorm: a new set of sheets, a laundry bag, a few storage crates. Nothing major. The clothes he has are perfectly fine, except he buys one new pair of jeans because he’d ripped a hole in the knee of his favorite pair tripping over something.

He isn’t easily impressed, is the point here. He never has been, so when his parents pull up in front of Harvard on move-in day and they’re exclaiming about how excited they are, he doesn’t really get it. It’s just a school. Just a campus.

They move in his boxes and he meets his roommate and makes plans to avoid him as much as possible and then he goes for a walk. Later in the fall, he supposes, when the leaves turn and the days shorten, it might be beautiful. Right now he’s feeling pretty eh about the whole thing.

When classes start, he’s eh about those too. He knows, of course, that he’ll have to work hard: it was the only thing had gotten him this far, because he was far from the smartest person in any classroom. But he’s not overwhelmed in the way some of his classmates seem to be.

He’s grabbed a seat near the front of his first actual concentration class and he’s not excited, exactly, but at least it’s better than his gen eds. He’s doodling in the top corner of a notepad when loud voices crowd around him, and as he’s turning to see what the disruption is he falls out of his chair, landing painfully on his side.

“Ow,” he says, rubbing his elbow.

“Are you alright?” asks the owner of one of the voices. He offers a hand to Josh.

“You knocked me out of my chair,” says Josh, not taking it. He frowns. “What do you think?”

The boy cocks his head at him. “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”

Josh blinks at him several times. “What?”

“Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. You fell out of your chair as I walked by, therefore you blame me, when in actuality I had nothing to do with it.”

“You’re arguing with me in Latin?”

“I am, and I’m winning.” The boy smiles brilliantly.

“Wow,” Josh says, feeling winded, stunned. He takes, finally, the boy’s proffered hand and gets up. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” the boy says, still smiling. “I’m Sam Seaborn.” He offers his hand for Josh to shake.  
“Josh Lyman,” and he takes Sam’s hand.

“Josh, I think we’re gonna be friends,” Sam says.

“Do you?” asks Josh, feeling doubtful.

“Yeah, I do,” Sam answers. “Best friends, actually.”

Josh can only shake his head and smile, and wonder if maybe his expectations have been too low, after all. “If you say so.”

 

2 - _instead of breaking my heart, you’re picking up all the pieces_

True to Sam’s prediction, he and Josh become fast friends. It helps that they’re the same concentration, of course, but even if they weren’t, Josh thinks Sam is maybe the most interesting person he’s ever met. Sam is the most magnetic person in any room; he draws people to him easily, can befriend anyone, can make conversation with even the most antagonistic of people. In that way, he’s Josh’s polar opposite. Josh has no idea how to talk to people, and hasn’t really tried to talk to anyone but Sam. Some of Sam’s friends become his friends, slowly, through repeated exposure, but otherwise Josh tends to stick to himself. And Sam, now.

Besides being incredibly charming, Sam is incredibly intelligent, sparking class debates and throwing professors for loops with convincing arguments with ease. Josh feels like he has to fight for every grade, every positive comment on an essay; Sam only studies when Josh is around, and even then seems to not really need it. Josh would be jealous if he didn’t like Sam so much, but then Sam is incredibly charming. He seems, to Josh, to be the whole package.

He's pretty easy on the eyes, too, a mop of brown hair covering deep, bright blue eyes and a brilliant, never-ending smile. But that's why the girls like him. It has nothing to do with why Josh likes him.

Sometime around March Sam starts harassing Josh to come visit him in California over the summer. Josh comes up with every possible reason such a visit wouldn’t work: the weather is too hot, too sunny; his parents would never let him; he’s probably going to have to find a job and make some money and he can’t just take off. Sam absolutely won’t take no for an answer, to the point where he calls Josh’s mom and asks permission for him.

She’s delighted to say yes.

Josh books tickets for the last week of June and the first week of July and Sam puts a countdown on the whiteboard in his room. Every time Josh comes over Sam’s erased the old number clean and replaced it with the current count in his irritatingly perfect handwriting. When they part at the end of the school year, Sam grabs Josh in a hug and tells him he can’t wait until he comes to Cali, and he’ll keep up the countdown in Josh’s absence.

Josh spends the first two weeks of summer moping around the house, trying to figure out why he feels so off. He’s always thrived on routine so he’s prepared to chalk it up to a lack thereof, but when Sam calls him on a Saturday night and he spends the next two days feeling better than he has since he left school, he figures out what the real problem is.

His mother confronts him about it over breakfast one morning.  
“You’ve been crabby,” she says, setting a mug of coffee down in front of him. He looks up from the newspaper and his cereal and sees she’s hovering in his space. He sets the paper down.

“A little,” he admits. “I’m probably just bored. I’ll be out of your hair for a little bit soon.”

“You’re not in my hair,” his mom says. She sits across from him. “I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m alright, Ma. I promise.”

She hesitates for a moment, reading his face, then smiles and ruffles his hair. “What are you going to do out there?”

Josh shrugs. “Hang out with Sam, mostly,” he answers.

“Whole state of California?” she asks skeptically. “And you’re gonna see the inside of Sam’s house?”

“Yeah,” Josh answers. “I mean. He mentioned about maybe meeting some of his friends from high school but I don’t think we’re gonna go sightseeing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You’ll have to bring him out here next summer. Or for Thanksgiving, even,” she says. “He seems like a really good kid.”

“He’s my best friend,” Josh answers earnestly.

There’s a look he doesn’t quite understand that passes over his mother’s face then, but it’s gone before he can suss it out. She comes around the counter and gives him a hug. “I’m glad you’re going,” she says. “I’m glad you’ve found such a good friend.”

Josh isn’t sure what to say to that, so he goes back to his cereal.

The weeks pass and Josh finally finds himself at the airport and realizes,  belatedly, he’s never flown on his own. It makes him a little nervous but he focuses on remembering that Sam is on the other side of the country and two airplanes stand between them, and all he has to do is ride them and they’ll be reunited. The thought is enough to push past his fear and board the plane.

Sam’s waiting for him at the airport with fucking balloons, of all things, and Josh reddens the moment he sees him and loses all embarrassment by the time his friend’s arms are around him. Sam’s parents introduce themselves and say nothing more—not that Sam would really let them say anymore, because he talks nonstop the entire car ride back to Sam’s house.

Josh is in absolute awe of Sam’s house. Josh’s parents are wealthy, he’s not unaware of that, but they tend to invest their money rather than spend it ostentatiously. Sam’s parents seem to want every person in Orange County to know exactly how much money they have. The house and its land sprawl over several acres and Josh is certain that without Sam to guide him he would get lost in its labyrinthine insides. When they get inside Sam immediately whisks Josh away to his room.

“What the fuck,” Josh says when they have the door closed behind them. “You didn’t tell me you live in a fucking mansion.”

Sam reddens. “It’s fine. Anyway, you’ve told me nothing about your summer so get talking.”

“You haven’t let me, asshole,” Josh says, punching Sam lightly in the arm, and Sam relaxes and punches him back.

They play Mario Kart and meet Sam’s friends (who are kind of tools, to be honest, Sam doesn’t even seem all that comfortable around them) and ride around in Sam’s car—Sam is obsessed with this car, never stops talking about it, and Josh doesn't see the allure but doesn't mind at all when Sam’s waxing poetic—and listen to music and Sam parks in a secluded park and they smoke while the teenagers around them get handsy. There's a night where, through the dark so he doesn't have to look Sam in the eyes, he tells him about Joanie, and when he's done and the thick haze of tears overtakes his ability to speak Sam props a chair in front of the door and crawls into Josh's sleeping bag (against Josh's protests) and holds him all night. They mostly don’t interact with Sam’s parents at all, except at awkward dinners where Sam’s parents say little and Sam says even less. Overall, Josh thinks, it’s pretty perfect. Like all the time he and Sam could be spending at college if there weren’t papers to write and classes to attend and exams to study for. He loves nearly every moment of it; when the trip is nearing its end, he starts to feel nervous about having to go home. Sam turns to him after dinner two nights before Josh leaves, after Sam’s parents have dismissed themselves, and places a hand heavily on Josh’s thigh. “You know I can literally feel your anxiety coming off of you in waves.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Josh says, not looking in Sam’s eyes.

Sam sighs and moves his hand away. “Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”

Sam leads him out into the backyard, farther and farther away from the house, nearly at the edge of what Josh imagines to be the property line, and tosses a blanket out on the ground and flops down on it. Josh hesitates; Sam props himself up on his elbow and looks up at Josh.

“I don’t bite,” he says, half a smile playing at his face.

Josh laughs and lays down beside him and looks up. The sky is huge, bright, and intense out here; the light from the city seems to be mostly gone where they are, and Josh is breathless with the beauty of it all. Sam seems to be drawing into himself, but he’s not proffering any hints about what might be going through his head. Josh tries to start several conversations but Sam offers only one word answers, if he hears Josh at all.

“If I ask a question, can you not be offended?” Josh asks finally, turning his head to Sam.

“It would take a lot, so yeah, probably,” Sam says evenly, keeping his eyes on the sky.

They’re probably half a mile from Sam’s house, but Josh looks around anyway, just to double check. He clears his throat. “Do your parents hate me or something?”

Sam looks over at Josh with sadness in his eyes.

“It’s just, they’ve been really weird the whole time I’ve been here,” Josh explains in a rush. “I’ve been trying to be polite but I didn’t know if there was some California thing I didn’t know about or something—”

“They think you’re gay,” Sam interrupts quietly.

“Oh.” Josh falls silent. He turns his head back to the stars and tries to find constellations he knows, and when he realizes he doesn’t know any constellations, starts making up his own. After several minutes he feels Sam grab his hand, and he turns his head back to his friend.  
“They think you’re gay because they think we’re dating,” Sam explains. “Or at least they think I’m interested in you.”

“Why would they think that?” Josh asks.

“They haven’t been the coolest about the fact that I’m into guys,” Sam says.

Josh looks back up at the stars. He traces two close together, and names his new constellation after himself and Sam in his head. “That’s stupid. What does it even matter?”

Sam is quiet for another several moments. “Did you...I mean. Did you already know? That I’m into guys?”

Josh shakes his head. “Sam, you’re obsessed with Mario Lopez. He’s not even a good actor.”

“No, he’s not,” says Sam with a quiet laugh. He sighs and looks over at Josh. “Does that mean you’re okay with it?”

“Of course I am.”  
“Really?”

“You’re my best friend,” Josh says simply. He tightens his grip on Sam’s hand. “I don’t care who you like.”

“Alright,” Sam says. He looks back up at the sky.

“What did you expect me to say?” Josh asks.

“I don’t know. That you hate me or something.” Josh hates the bitterness coloring Sam’s voice, hates it more than he’s ever hated anything.

“Sam,” he says lightly.

“Yeah?”  
“I hate you.”

Sam looks over and meets his eyes, and sees his half smile, and meets it with his own. “No, you don’t,” he says softly.

“No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” Josh agrees. He scoots a little closer to Sam and presses himself against his side, and he feels Sam relax, and his heart aches a little in a way he can’t name. “You’re my best friend,” he says again, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “You’re mine, too.”

When they go to watch the fireworks the next night, Sam takes Josh’s hand again, and Josh holds it all night and thinks about the stars he’s claimed for them.

 

3 - _my heart softens to your name_

Something grows between Sam and Josh in the months following Josh’s visit to California. For the rest of the summer Josh calls Sam every day and they talk for hours, long after they’ve exhausted every conversation topic they can think of. There are long minutes of just silence, where all Josh can hear is Sam’s breathing on the other end of the line, and it’s enough. They miss once; Sam’s got some family commitment that keeps him out past when Josh falls asleep, even though he tries to wait up. Josh walks around all the next day in a haze, feeling off until he and Sam can talk again that night.

When they go back to Harvard in the fall, they’re inseparable. Most of their classes are together, they spend hours in the library together, they study together, they eat together. Their friends start calling them SamJosh, all one word, smashed together just as tangibly as the boys themselves are. And Josh loves it, loves being part of something so bright and brilliant that the people around them have to shield their eyes. They’re becoming their stars, Josh thinks sometimes, and then. And then.

It’s just that—sometimes Josh is taken aback by how intensely he feels about Sam. Sometimes their hands brush together and Josh feels a shock, and Sam must feel it, too, because they both jerk their hands away and avoid each other’s eyes for a few minutes. Josh wonders what he’d see if he had the courage to look Sam in the face when it happens. Sometimes Sam gets tired after long study sessions, and he falls asleep in Josh’s bed, and instead of kicking him out Josh shoves him over to one side, and sometimes when he wakes up Sam’s arms are wrapped around him in a way that he thinks should feel weird but doesn’t feel weird at all, not until Sam wakes and wrenches himself away from Josh. (And, if once, Josh wakes in the night, having dreamed of fire and the things he could lose, tears shining in his eyes, begging Sam not to go—well. They don’t talk about it in the morning.) Sometimes Josh finds himself staring at Sam’s lips and wondering what they’d feel like against his. What they’d taste like.

Josh has never had a best friend, especially not in the way Sam is his best friend, so he suspects this is all fine and totally normal and not in any way an indication that he wants anything more than friendship with Sam. It seems to be the way Ed and Larry interact with each other, and they’re best friends, so. It’s totally normal.

Josh’s mom makes him bring Sam home for fall break, and Sam is equally as charming with his parents as he is with everyone else. Within twenty minutes of their arrival Sam has engaged Noah in a conversation about physics, of all things, and Josh and his mother sit back and watch them talk and at some point his mom puts an arm around him and kisses his temple and he’s not sure what that’s about.

There’s food on Sunday, and football, and after dinner Josh curls up with his feet tucked under Sam’s leg and his head on Sam’s shoulder and dozes because he doesn’t actually care about the Patriots but the company and the contact is nice, comforting, and he doesn’t even shock too badly when Sam wakes him by yelling an obscenity at the television.

He thinks, as he’s drifting again, about the difference between his parents and Sam’s. His house and Sam’s. Maybe he’s biased, but he thinks he got lucky. But Sam is his family, now, too, and by extension so are his parents, so maybe Sam got lucky, too.

Josh spends Monday reading a novel in bed, for once, not a fucking textbook, and Sam writes furiously in a notebook most of the day, right beside him. Josh wants to ask what he’s writing, but he doesn’t. Maybe someday.

Josh’s mom wakes him Tuesday morning and puts a finger to her lips to indicate that he shouldn’t bother Sam, still asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor. Josh steps carefully over him and throws on a sweatshirt before joining his mom downstairs.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she suggests, shoes already on.

Josh rubs at his eyes. “It’s like, eight in the morning.”

“It’s a great time for a walk,” she says, and her tone suggests she’s not accepting no for an answer, so he shrugs and follows her out the door.

They get a good half a mile before his mother says anything again, and then it’s blunt: “You have feelings for Sam.”

Josh stops dead. “No, I don’t,” he says indignantly.

She crosses her arms, frowns deeply. “There’s really no point in lying to me.”  
“I’m not!” he exclaims. He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t have any feelings for Sam!”

She sighs and places a hand on his arm. “Honey. I’m not mad. I won’t hate you.”

“I didn’t think you would!” Josh protests. “I’m not not telling you, I’m saying I don’t have feelings for him!”

She’s silent then, and he keeps walking because maybe that will help him sort out whatever she’s accusing him of. She follows.

Feelings for Sam are bad. Feelings for Sam are forbidden, because then. They complicate things. And anyway, he doesn’t have them.

“What makes you think I have feelings for Sam?” he asks, more quietly now.

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” she answers. “You’re together all the time. Anytime we talk on the phone you’re telling me about him, about what you’ve been doing together, and half the time it’s nothing, Josh, and you’re just telling me that you were with him. You boys spent all day yesterday holed up in your room together.”

“We were just—I was reading, and he was writing—”

“I’m not accusing you of doing anything beyond that,” she says evenly. There are more footsteps penetrated only by birdsong and the breeze in the trees. Josh shoves his hands in his pockets because it’s cold and he’s feeling fidgety.

“Our friends call us SamJosh,” he says finally. “All one word. Because they never see us without each other.”

She nods, as if this makes sense to her. They’re approaching the house again and Josh is feeling flighty, like maybe he should do another lap, running this time. Maybe it will calm him down. “If you say you don’t have feelings for him, I believe you,” she says as the porch comes into view. “All I’ll say is that if you do have feelings for him, your father and I support you. We love you, no matter what, and we want you to be happy.”

Josh looks at her for a long time, all the way up to the door and into the kitchen, and thinks about Sam asleep upstairs. Thinks about what he might want. “Sam makes me happy,” he whispers, and she smiles and nods again, and he goes back up to his room with a weight on his chest.

He isn’t as careful about coming back into the room and he trips on Sam’s feet, bangs his knee on the bedpost, stumbles into the mattress, and Sam opens an eye and looks at him. “Isn’t it Tuesday?” he asks, his voice groggy.

“Mom made me go for a walk,” Josh answers, laying back down and rubbing his knee. “Too much lazing, she claims.” He looks down at Sam, whose hair is messy and who’s reaching for his glasses and who looks, Josh thinks, absolutely perfect, in this moment. Josh wants to reach down and muss his hair just to break the aesthetic of it all.

His mother is right. He has feelings for Sam Seaborn.

“Huh,” Sam says. He smiles at Josh and rubs his eyes again. “Well, we’re up. What do you want to do today?”

The problem, as Josh had noted before, is that feelings complicate things. It’s complicated, now, when Sam falls asleep on his shoulder on the way back to school that evening. It’s complicated when, in moments of elation, he throws his arms around Sam and knows he doesn’t want to let go. It’s complicated when Sam falls asleep during study sessions, as he’s want to do, because Josh has never minded sharing the bed but it’s so much harder to be in such close quarters with him and not do something stupid like kiss him.

Of course Josh is aware that Sam, theoretically, could be attracted to him. He knows Sam’s into guys, has known that for a long time. It’s just that he also knows that compared to Josh, Sam is—Sam is the sun, burning bright and close, and Josh is dull. Fading.

There are moments, though, that Josh indulges in. He imagines, once or twice, that he catches Sam looking for just a moment too long back at him. That when he pulls off his sweatshirt and it rides up that Sam stares at the patch of skin that’s exposed. That they’re talking and Sam’s gaze lingers for a moment too long on his lips. He never, never hopes, but he pretends. Pretends that maybe Sam could feel the same.

It’s January and it’s a long weekend and the semester has barely started but Josh is already behind, so when Sam comes in and shuts the door behind him, locks it with intention and care, and holds up a bag of marijuana, Josh lets a smile cross his face.

“Sam,” Josh says, exasperation in his voice. “I’ve got shit to do, and so do you.”  
“It’s a long weekend,” Sam says, dragging Josh out of his desk chair and pushing him down into his own bed. If Sam notices that Josh has stopped breathing, he doesn’t say anything. “You can do shit tomorrow and Sunday and Monday. Tonight we’re smoking.”

Josh just shakes his head as Sam clears his desk off and gets to work. Watching Sam roll joints is like watching an artist create, Josh thinks, as Sam packs the joint full. There’s dedication, passion, creativity; his hands roll the paper with precision and finesse.

“It’s just marijuana, Josh,” Sam says, grinning as he catches Josh staring. God, Sam can read him like a book. Josh reddens and aims a kick in his direction.

“Let me get the first hit,” he says.

Sam cracks the window and joins Josh in the bed. He sets an ashtray between their knees, but their hips and shoulders are touching. He produces a lighter from his pocket and lights the joint, then hands it to Josh.

Josh takes a long drag and holds the smoke in his lungs for several seconds before blowing it out, and he leans his head back against the wall. When he hands the joint back to Sam, their fingers graze against each other, and Josh closes his eyes.

“Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea after all,” Josh admits, and Sam laughs smoke out of his mouth and nose.

“I’m glad I’ve taught you to relax at least a little,” he answers.

“A little,” Josh concedes, and ignores the tension in his stomach.

They smoke slowly. At some point Sam gets up and turns Josh’s radio on, and when he comes back he’s closer, and Josh is high enough now that touching Sam is intense, makes him feel like there’s a fire consuming him in the only good way. He stares at Sam more openly, watching the way the joint touches his lips, the way the smoke blows out from his mouth. Being this close, it makes it hard to breathe, and when Sam next turns to him their noses touch and Josh gasps, and Sam meets his eyes, and he knows, instantly, that Sam knows, that his secret’s out, and he’s scared and elated and hard, and please, God, let this be happening.

“Sam,” Josh breathes out, their faces close, and Josh is vividly aware of every nerve ending, every atom between himself and Sam. “Sam.”

“Josh,” Sam answers. Josh moves a hand slowly, heavily, finds Sam’s thigh and lays it there.

“Sam.” Sam’s name sounds like music on his tongue, he wants to say it forever, repeat it over and over until it’s the only thing he knows.

Sam hesitates, Josh can see it, Sam moves back a fraction of a breath, away from him. “Josh.”

“Will you—” God, say it, _say it_. “Sam, I want—”

Sam exhales all at once and pulls back, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Josh. I want you, too.”

Josh can’t breathe, can’t breathe, and his fingers fist in the fabric of Sam’s pants. “Sam, I—”

“We can’t.”

Josh can’t breathe. “Sam, will you fuck me?”

“No.”

“Sam—”

"I'm not gonna fuck you when you're high, Josh," Sam says, picking up the joint and taking a long drag. He holds it between his fingers out to Josh, who doesn't take it.

"Why? I want to," Josh answers, and he tries not to feel like a petulant child about it.

"I know you do." He sets the joint gently in the ashtray between them. "I want it, too."

"Then why are you saying no?"

Sam leans in close to Josh, close enough that Josh could surge forward, easily, and capture his lips in a kiss. He doesn’t. “When I fuck you for the first time,” Sam says, and his hand finds Josh’s hip. “I don’t want to wake up in the morning and wonder if it was because of anything but me.”

“Sam,” Josh says, his voice strained, his heart racing. Sam’s fingers through the layers of fabric are burning his skin. He can’t breathe. “Please.”

“I’m not saying no,” Sam answers. “I’m saying not tonight. Ask me again when you’re sober.”

“What if I can’t?” Josh asks, embarrassed by the desperation in his voice.

Sam moves his hand to Josh’s cheek, and Josh closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “I’ll wait.”

Josh breathes again. “I hate you,” he whispers, eyes still closed.

“No, you don’t,” Sam answers.

Josh shakes his head and pulls away from Sam. “No. I don’t.”

They smoke the rest of the joint in silence, and Josh’s head finds Sam’s shoulder, and he can almost pretend it’s what he needs.

When he goes to bed that night, he pulls Sam down next to him, and Sam doesn’t protest, and they fall asleep with their arms around each other.

 

4 - _don’t you know that you’re the last thing on my mind_

When Josh wakes the next morning, Sam is gone, and Josh finds himself walking alone to the library.

He has every intention of actually working on the piles of homework accumulating on his desk, he packs them all up and dutifully carries them across campus, but when he sits down to actually work he can’t focus at all. In the back of his mind Sam’s hands are on his skin and he can’t shake the phantom touch that haunts him. After a while he gets up, abandons his work, and wanders through the rows of books. The Dewey Decimal system has always confounded him, so he’s confused when he finds himself in the astronomy section. He pulls out a book that claims to have maps of the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere in the different seasons and takes it back to where he’d been working.

He wants to think he’s just flipping at random but he knows, he knows what he’s looking for. His and Sam’s stars. He looks and looks and looks and can’t find them anywhere, in any season, and he wishes he’d had the forethought, the night he stole them, to search for markers that he knew around them so he could find them again. As if he knew a goddamn thing about the stars. As if he knows a goddamn thing about whatever’s happening between himself and Sam.

Josh doesn’t get anything done that day, in the library. He doesn’t get anything done in his room. He spends the next two days in bed not even pretending to attempt to get anything done because he knows he can’t. If he were braver, he thinks, somewhere around three p.m. on Sunday, he’d get up and walk to Sam’s room and demand they finish whatever they’ve started. Press his lips against Sam’s the way he’s so determined to, push him down into his bed and finally take Sam the way he’d taken the stars. The stars hadn’t protested. Sam had.

He finally pushes himself out of his room Monday night, if only because he’s run out of food that isn’t ramen noodles and he’s getting tired of the sodium. He eats alone, in a corner of the cafeteria, eyes unfocused and head a mess, barely tasting whatever he’d picked up.

“Hey, where’ve you been?”

Josh jumps and spills his soda, and blinks several times to figure out that it is, in fact, Sam sitting in front of him. Sam, sitting in front of him, smiling and happy like he always is (and Josh stops to think for half a second about what he must look like and Jesus, it’s not good, maybe he shouldn’t think about it after all). And then Josh remembers about the soda and cleans it up before it runs all over the table.

“I’ve—been working,” Josh lies as he pulls napkins by the ton out of the container. “In my room. What—where have you been?”

“Out,” Sam says, still smiling, and this is the way it is, then. They’re pretending nothing happened. Josh’s heart aches. “You really spent the whole weekend in your room?”

“Um.” Josh deposits the napkins in a wet mass upon his tray and pushes the whole thing to the side. He wants to reach out and touch Sam. He doesn’t. “Yeah, I guess.”

Sam’s smile falters for half a second, and Josh wonders if, maybe, he’ll say something. Acknowledge their latent whatever. He doesn’t. “You work harder than anyone I know, Josh.”

Josh shifts uncomfortably. “I guess.”

“I mean it. You’re gonna work for the President one day, I know it.”

Josh lets himself give Sam the ghost of a smile, and he sees Sam catch it, brighten a little. “You think I won’t be the President?”

“Nah,” Sam says. “That’ll be me.”

Josh laughs and the tension he’d been feeling drains, slowly, and although it isn’t right between them, it isn’t wrong, either, and maybe they can live in this place of almost.

The place of almost. They do live there. For days, and then days stretch out into weeks, and weeks stretch out into months. Every movement coordinated carefully so that they’re not touching, every statement thoughtfully considered before being voiced so that they can’t catch each other off guard. If Josh had thought it was bad before, when he wanted Sam but couldn’t have him merely because he knew Sam would say no, then knowing Sam might say yes but wouldn’t is a million times worse. This is the dance they perform: in front of their friends, they’re the same, as much as they can be, but they’re never, never alone. Josh can’t trust himself alone with Sam, he knows this, and so he begs off from nights out, from drinking, from smoking. He puts himself in no situations where it might be possible to let his guard down. He can’t.

It’s a Friday afternoon in late April; Josh is doodling stars on the corner of his notes, completely unfocused, when he hears his door open and looks up, and his heart leaps when he realizes it’s Sam. He chastises himself and scratches out the doodled shapes.

“Hey,” he says, letting ink bleed from his pen onto the stars. “What’s up?”

“We’re going out tonight,” Sam says, and Josh can hear him moving toward the desk where he’s working. He keeps his eyes on his notes. “Me and Ed and Larry and I think some of the guys from applied mathematics.”

“Yeah, those guys really know how to party,” Josh says, rolling his eyes.

“You should come,” Sam responds, and Josh can hear the meticulously planned tone in his voice, the don’t-get-your-hopes-up, the I-don’t-want-this-too-much. It makes Josh’s stomach twist.

“I think I’ll stay in for the night,” Josh says, and he hears Sam sigh. “You have fun, though.”

“Come on,” Sam says, moving a pile of books out of the way to sit on the desk. “Come on, you haven’t been out with me in months.”

“I have three papers due next week, exams are coming up,” Josh says, still looking down at his notes. He knows if he looks up his resolve will crumble. “I’ve gotta work.”

“Josh,” Sam exhales, and his voice is quieter, more plaintive. Less guarded. “Come on. Please.”

Josh makes his fatal mistake, looking up at Sam and seeing the plea in his eyes. Josh shakes his head and closes the book he’d been reading. Sam whoops and pulls him up out of the chair, into a quick hug, and for a second Josh remembers the easy friendship they’d had for so long, before he’d fucked it up. Sam holds just a moment too long, and then it’s awkward again for a second as they break apart and look at their feet.

“Come on,” Sam says again. “It’s gonna be fun, let’s go.”

Josh still isn’t convinced by the time they show up at the party. Ed and Larry are delighted to see him, and Sam immediately procures a beer for him, but it’s been a long time and Josh really isn’t sure he’s comfortable at all. He sips incredibly slowly, because he’s not getting fucking drunk around Sam, he isn’t repeating that. _Ask me again when you’re sober._ He dumps his beer into a local house plant and replaces it with water.

Sam is socializing with everyone, as he does, making his way through the crowd like he’s everyone’s oldest friend. Josh finds a place beside his drenched plant and sits fully on the floor, pulling his knees up against his chest, trying to figure out why he’d come at all.

After a bit Sam finds him again and sits beside him. Tentatively he places a hand on Josh’s knee.

“Dance with me,” he says, his voice low, barely audible above the noise, and Josh thinks for a second he’s imagined it, but when he meets Sam’s eyes they’re sparkling with something he hasn’t seen in months.

“Okay,” Josh agrees, and the brilliance of Sam’s smile can probably be seen from Mars.

He lets Sam pull him up off the floor, into the throng of people. There are bodies pressing in on all sides, pushing him closer to Sam, and he tries not to get too close but it’s impossible, like this, to not find himself inches away from Sam’s face for the first time in too long. Josh wonders how many beers Sam’s had. He thinks he’s only seen Sam go to the bar once. He wonders: if he pressed his lips against Sam’s right here, in the middle of the floor, if he would taste beer on his lips, if the world would stop. If his heart would stop.

In what turns out to be the worst thing to happen all night, the door opens then, and more coeds flood into the party, and Sam looks at Josh and says, “linguistics is here,” and presses a quick kiss to Josh’s cheek before going off to greet them. There’s a thousand people surrounding him but Josh stops moving, stops breathing, and touches his hand to where Sam had touched him. He finds himself moving off the dance floor, back over to his plant, knowing Sam will know where to find him. He waits.

Sam does his thing, effortlessly. He’s beautiful to watch, a comet in orbit, making rounds with everyone and being gracious and charming. Except.

Except he keeps coming back to one girl.

Except he brings her back a drink, and one of his own, and stays, longer than Josh thought he might.

Except he’s no longer making eye contact with Josh across the room.

Josh’s stomach twists into anxious knots, because surely, surely this isn’t happening, not while he’s standing right there to witness it, Sam wouldn’t do that, Sam—

Sam leans down and presses his lips against the girl’s, and Josh watches, horrified, in slow motion, and is so grateful he hadn’t had anything more to drink because he’s certain he would vomit.

Josh pushes through the crowd to the front door, desperate, ferally seeking freedom, and turns back for only a second to see Sam throwing his head back in laughter at something linguistics girl has said.

“I hate you,” Josh says, and for the first time Sam isn’t there to refute him.

 

5 - _swirling like oceans apart from each other_

There’s exactly one gay bar in town, and that’s where Josh finds himself the next night.

Truthfully he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s terrified and nursing a drink alone at the bar when a brunette with shaggy hair approaches him and asks if he can buy his next round.

“Sure,” Josh agrees, and the smile he gives the stranger doesn’t reach his eyes.

He doesn’t remember the guy’s name the next morning as he’s picking his clothes up off the floor, he still doesn’t remember on the way back to his dorm, and it’s not until he sees Sam, leaning up against his door, that it clicks—the guy’s name was Taylor.

“Hey,” Sam says.

Josh inclines his head but doesn’t say anything as he unlocks his door and goes inside.

“Late night at the library?” Sam asks, following him in.

“Something like that,” Josh answers. He needs a shower, and then he needs to spend the rest of the day getting shit done, and neither of those things is possible with Sam in close quarters as he is.

Sam goes over and sits on his bed, and Josh thinks maybe he expects him to join him, except he’s not going to do that. He sits at his desk and puts his head down there.

“Josh?” Sam asks, meekly.

“What do you want?” Josh asks without lifting his head.

“I thought.” Sam’s quiet, and Josh isn’t sure he’s ever heard him like this, and what does it matter, anyway. “I thought we could study together.”

Josh looks up at him and feels a flash of anger he didn’t expect. “Why don’t you go study with your linguistics girl?” he spits out, and he sees Sam flinch and recoil. Silence hangs between them, and then—

“Her name’s Lisa,” Sam says, and Jesus, of all the things he could have said.

“Get out, Sam,” Josh answers, and he has to look away so Sam doesn’t see the tears in his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my room.”

Sam hesitates for a long moment, and Josh wonders if he’s going to call his bluff. He doesn’t. He stands and pauses in the doorway for several seconds and goes, and Josh is left to his misery alone.

Josh falls into a routine. Work all week, work too hard, don’t sleep because you might dream, don’t speak to anyone, don’t raise your hand in class, don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. Go to the bar Friday night, let yourself be picked up by a brunette with glasses, go home with him, sleep it off Saturday morning, back to work Saturday afternoon. On the off chance he does see Sam outside of class long enough to interact with him, they’re fighting, about anything and everything, because Sam is still looking at him morosely, even though Josh has heard he’s dating the linguistics girl. Lisa.

The summer is long and lonely and Josh gets himself a job scooping ice cream to keep himself busy. The phone rings at the beginning of the summer at least once a day, usually late at night, but when his mother comes to his room and says, “it’s Sam, honey, will you take the call?” he shakes his head and turns away.

The phone stops ringing after a few weeks.

His mother brings him breakfast one morning in late June, a rare day off from the ice cream parlor, when Josh is trying not to think about the prior summer and where his star might be, trying not to wonder if the stars had drifted apart the way he and Sam had. “What happened between you and Sam?” she asks, setting the tray down beside his bed.

Josh picks at a piece of toast. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She frowns. “I won’t push if you really don’t, Josh, but you should. You’re hurting, I can see it. I want to do what I can to help.”

“You can’t help, Ma,” he says, and he’s surprised to be blinking back tears. “He’s got a girlfriend.”

She doesn’t say anything immediately but Josh can tell she’s surprised. Eventually she puts a hand on his shoulder. “How did that come to be?”

And so Josh finds himself telling her everything, save the part about the marijuana because she’s cool but maybe not that cool, and by the end of his story he’s crying outright and has to bury his head in his hands to hide it away. She pulls him into her chest and he cries there, in a way he hasn’t since he was a child. He calms, eventually, and is embarrassed and pulls away, into himself again.

“He’ll come back. You’ll make this right,” she says after a while.

He shakes his head. “No. He won’t.”

She kisses his forehead and leaves him to finish his breakfast.

When summer finally ends and Josh returns to school his prior routine falls back into place. It’s scarcely October before he’s exhausted, run down, desperate for fall break. The weekend’s guy—Brandon, or Landon, maybe—notices his Harvard sweatshirt as he’s getting dressed.

“There’s a party tonight, in the theater frat house,” Brandon/Landon says. “You should come.”

Josh frowns at him. “I’m not really the party type.”

“It’ll be fun,” Brandon/Landon promises. “Theater throws the best parties.”

“Yeah,” Josh answers, rolling his eyes. “Alright.”

And yet, at eight that evening, he finds himself walking through the bitter cold down to the party, if only to get some distance from an essay that wouldn’t be written. It’s loud and crowded and Josh grabs a beer and sips it slowly, letting noise crash around him, overwhelm him. Sam would love this. Sam would be all over the place, playing the part of everyone’s best friend. God, he misses him. His heart aches heavy with the weight of it.

“Josh?”

Josh looks up and sees it’s Ed calling his name, Larry just behind him, and fuck, that means Sam is here somewhere, too, and Josh finds himself trying to escape before any more damage can be done.

“Josh!”

And there’s Sam’s voice, Sam’s calling after him, but he’s gone, pushing his way through the crowd and out the door. He stares up at the sky when he reaches the outdoors, finds a spot on the ground that’s hard enough to sit on and really looks up. It’s been so long since he even looked for their stars. He’s sure they’re not here, not in October, not on the East Coast, but he looks up anyway and searches for them. Calls out for them.

“Josh, it’s fucking freezing, what are you doing out here? Why don’t you have a coat on?”

Josh turns and it’s Sam, of course it’s Sam, why did he think Sam would let it go. They’ve barely spoken this semester, and then only in short, clipped tones before one of them yells at the other and they implode.

“I’m trying to find us,” Josh answers honestly.

Sam shakes his head. “...I have no idea what that means.”

Josh exhales and watches his breath form shapes in front of him. “It means I miss us. I miss the way we were. I miss when it was so easy to just...be with you. Before Lisa.”

Sam scoffs. “What happened between us wasn’t Lisa’s fault. We’d been wrong for a long time before that.”

“Yeah,” Josh says. He looks up at the sky again. “I guess you’re right.”

“Josh,” Sam sighs. “Will you please talk to me? I want to understand, I don’t.” He exhales and kicks a soft patch of ground. “I don’t know what happened with you.”

“With me?”

“Yes. I said—I said to ask and you never did.”

Josh looks up. They’re talking about this, then, for the first time since January. “You said you’d wait.”

Sam frowns. “I _did_ wait, I waited six months—”

“It was four.”

“Jesus Christ, is now the time to be pedantic?”

“It’s always the time to be pedantic.”

“Josh!” Sam runs a hand through his hair. “Goddamnit, you’re so frustrating sometimes!”

Josh says nothing. There’s anger in his heart, and fear, and wanting. He doesn’t know which emotion to let out.

Sam sighs and goes to sit beside him. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

“You meant it how you meant it,” Josh says quietly. He’s silent for a few moments; he wants to reach out and touch Sam but he can’t. He doesn’t. “When I said I was trying to find us, what I meant was...I meant.” Josh shakes his head, trying to find the words. “You remember when I came to visit you in California?”

“Of course I do.”

“And we spent that night outside? You came out to me?”

“Yeah, I remember, Josh." Sam's voice is soft now, nostalgic. "How could I forget?”

Josh looks up at the sky. “I made a constellation that night. There were two stars, close together, and I took them and made them ours.”

Sam looks at him for a long time, and the weight of his stare finally forces Josh to look back at him.

“You took the stars for us?” Sam asks.

Josh nods and looks away, into the sky and stars. “It was stupid.”

“I don’t think it was,” Sam says, and Josh can barely hear him above the noise of the party. “You’re not frustrating, Josh. I’m sorry I said that.”

“Yeah,” Josh agrees. “It’s alright. Anyway. I can’t find our stars here. I think they’re out in California still.”

“Why didn’t you ever ask me?” Sam asks. “You knew—you knew I’d say yes.”

“I didn’t know,” Josh refutes. “For all I knew, it was the drugs for you, too.”

“You had to know it wasn’t the drugs,” Sam pleads.

“I really didn't. And you never said anything, either, so don’t go putting all the blame on me.”

“I’m not—”

“You kinda are.”

“Josh,” Sam exhales. “I don’t want to fight.”

Josh stands up and crosses his arms over his chest, facing away from Sam. “Then go back inside.”

“I’m not gonna do that.”

“So what now, then?” Josh asks, his voice rising again. “Because these days it seems the only talking we can do is through fighting.”

Sam stands and puts a hand on Josh’s shoulder, and Josh freezes, but he doesn’t move away. “I didn’t—I didn’t say anything because I was scared, too. I didn’t know you were into men. I didn’t know if you just wanted sex or…” Sam shakes his head, drops his hand from Josh’s shoulder. “I dont know what you want.”

Josh turns around and looks Sam in the eyes for the first time in what feels like months. “Sam, I want the same thing now that I’ve always wanted. Definitely since last fall break, probably since California. Maybe since before that, I don’t know. But I can’t have you now, so what’s the point? Why are we even having this conversation?”

“Because I’m worried about you, Josh, because you’ve been with a different guy every weekend—”

“That’s none of your goddamn business!”

“—because you’re pulling away from everyone, because you’re pulling away from me and I need you—”

“You need me? _You_ need me?”

“Yes, Josh, I do, you have to know that—”

“I hate you!” Josh yells, turning away from Sam.

“No, you don’t!” Sam shouts back. He puts his hand on Josh’s shoulder and turns him back around roughly. “Because if you did, you would look me in the eye when you say it, and you can’t! You never have, Josh, because when you say you hate me, you mean the other thing!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, ‘the other thing?’”

“You mean I love you!”

They both fall silent, chests heaving. Josh feels wetness on his face and realizes he’s crying, and he wipes the tears away angrily.

“So what if that’s what I mean,” Josh says quietly. “So what.”

Sam closes his eyes, and Josh thinks he might be crying, too. “Josh,” he breathes. “I’m sorry. For everything. You were right, I should have said something. It takes two of us. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Josh says.

“Come inside,” Sam pleads. “It’s cold, you’re gonna get sick.”

“I think I’m just gonna go home,” Josh answers, shaking his head and looking at the ground. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Come on, then,” Sam says. “I’ll walk you back.”

Josh gives him a sideways look. “You don’t have to. And isn’t Lisa in there?”

Sam looks back at the house in silence for a long few moments. “She’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

He starts walking back in the direction of Josh’s apartment, and Josh has no choice but to follow. Now that his anger has worn off, he’s noticing the cold for the first time. He shivers once or twice when suddenly Sam thrusts his coat into Josh’s hands.

Josh stops and stares at it. Sam takes several more steps before he realizes Josh has stopped and has to double back.

“What?” Sam asks, as if he’s looking for the fight.

Josh looks at the coat and then up at Sam. “Nothing,” he says. He slips it on, and it’s warm and smells like Sam. “Thank you.”

“Come on, now I’m cold,” Sam says, walking on.

Josh shrugs further into the coat and follows after Sam. There are about a million thoughts racing through his head, and he can’t decipher any of them. Why is Sam walking him back? What had they even argued about? Is there still a chance he could make this right?

“Thinking so much is slowing your feet down,” Sam comments. He grabs Josh’s elbow, threads his arm through, and starts pulling him more quickly toward his apartment. Josh can’t help but notice that this is the closest they’ve been to each other in a long time, and his heart races of its own accord.

“Sam,” he says.  
“Come on, we can talk more when we get back,” Sam says without stopping.

“You can take your coat back,” Josh offers, not actually wanting to give it up.

“You’ve been outside a lot longer than I have, and anyway we’re almost there.”

Josh tries to focus on putting his feet one in front of the other, tries to keep his brain from asking so many questions, and he thinks he mostly succeeds because they shortly arrive at his apartment. Josh can’t even ask if Sam is coming up before Sam’s marching inside, pulling Josh along behind him. When they get up to the apartment Sam lets himself inside and drags Josh in, closing the door behind him. He lets Josh go, heads to the kitchen to grab himself a beer. Like nothing has passed between them.

“Help yourself,” Josh mumbles half-heartedly. He goes and lays down on his bed without taking off Sam’s coat.

“Thanks, I will,” Sam answers. He pops the top and sits in Josh’s desk chair, propping his feet up on Josh’s bed.

“Your shoes,” says Josh.  
“My coat,” answers Sam, raising an eyebrow at him.

Josh nods. “Fair enough.”

Sam drinks and Josh can’t find the words he wants to say, even though they’ve been on the tip of his tongue for months.

“You left the party,” Josh says, feeling stupid saying it aloud.

“Yeah,” Sam says, shrugging. “It was lame, anyway.”

Josh frowns and studies the ceiling, frustrated with his inability to communicate his point. “You left the party for me,” he tries again.

Sam looks at him for several long moments, then takes another sip of his beer. “Yeah,” he answers. “Guess I did.”

Josh sits up and swings his feet over the bed. “Sam?”

Sam leans forward, takes a deep breath in. “Yeah?”

“I’m sober now.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “You are.”

Josh hesitates for another moment, lets his eyes flicker down to Sam’s lips, then meets Sam’s eyes again. “Can I—?”

Sam takes another deep breath and nods, and Josh closes the distance between them and finally, _finally_ kisses Sam. It’s everything Josh has been looking for, the taste of Sam’s lips and cheap beer and friendship and love and Josh is honestly overwhelmed, has to pull away so he can remember to breathe. Sam brings his hand to Josh’s cheek and they gaze at each other and Sam’s smiling and Josh is smiling and for the first time in months Josh feels at peace with himself. He leans in again, presses his lips to Sam’s, and Sam’s lips part and Josh’s tongue scrapes across Sam’s teeth and it’s awkward and good and _right_. Josh brings a hand around to the back of Sam’s head and holds it there, his fingers brushing against the strands of hair on Sam’s neck.

“Took us long enough,” Sam says, and Josh can feel the way his lips are curved up in a smile and he thinks his heart might explode from joy.

"We're alright?" Josh asks, trying to make sure this isn’t a dream.

"Yes," Sam answers, kissing Josh again, and Josh knows, knows his dreams aren’t this sweet. "We're alright, Josh. We're alright."

 

+1 - _if you wait around a while, I'll make you fall for me_

“We weren’t really dating, I guess.”

It’s Sunday morning and they’ve spent all of the last day and a half in bed together, dozing on and off, kissing and fucking and talking. Now Sam’s running the fingers of one hand along the inside of Josh’s bicep and using the other to sweep Josh’s hair out of his eyes.

Josh gives him a curious glance. “I heard—everyone said.”

Sam shrugs. “Rumors. We went to parties together, sometimes, made out here and there. I never slept with her.”

“It’s okay if you did,” Josh says. “I won’t be mad. I slept with enough people over the last few months, I wouldn’t have any right.”

“Josh.” Sam takes the hand holding his hair and moves it to his cheek. “I’m not lying to you. I didn’t.”

Josh nods after a while. “Alright.”

“She was pining after some history girl. I think she said her name was Laurie. We were both just lonely.”

Josh closes his eyes. “You know I thought you were gonna kiss me that night.”

“I thought you were gonna kiss me.”

Josh scoffs and shakes his head. “We’re both idiots.”

Sam moves his hand down to Josh’s hip and traces words into the sensitive part of his skin, and Josh has to focus on actually hearing the words Sam says next, which come out quiet and contemplative. “Love will do that to you.”

Josh holds eye contact for several long moments, and then surges forward and kisses Sam, hard and messy and rough, hoping it will convey everything he’s feeling, and their conversation ends for a while.

Later Sam decides he’s had enough of takeout and they’re getting up, they’re getting dressed, they’re going down to the caf and eating real food. Josh groans through this whole process, but he’ll admit it’s not the worst idea ever when Sam joins him in the shower and then steals a whole-ass outfit because he doesn’t want to put on the clothes from the party again since they smell like two day old beer.

“You look ridiculous,” Josh says, sliding a hand in the waistband of the sweatpants Sam’s stolen. “My clothes are too big on you.”

“Only because you wear everything at least a size and a half too big,” Sam protests. He squirms out of the way of Josh’s roaming hands. “It’s not my fault my clothes are well fitted.”

Josh takes Sam’s hand and laces their fingers together, and he sees Sam look down and smile at it. “Come on, I’m hungry,” Josh says, not letting go, leading them out of the room.

They huddle together in the cold afternoon, and Josh wraps a hand around Sam’s waist as they walk. Sam leans into the touch.

“Hey, Sam,” Josh says, looking over at him.

Sam perks up and meets Josh’s eyes, pauses their walking. "Hey, babe."

Josh reddens; he's still getting used to the little endearments Sam throws around so casually, like they've always been there, under the surface, and he's just never given them voice. “You said...the other night, when we were fighting, you said when I say I hate you, I mean the other thing.”

“I did.”

Josh takes a deep breath and continues. “Does that mean that when you say no, you don’t, that you mean the other thing, too?”

“Hey, Josh?” Sam’s teeth are chattering a little but he doesn’t move.

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you try just saying what you mean?”

Josh scoffs. “That sounds like a lot.”  
“I think you’ll be alright.” Sam shakes the arms of Josh’s sweatshirt down to cover his hands.  
Josh wraps his arms around him. “If I sustain emotional trauma I’m footing you with the therapy bill.”

“Fair enough,” Sam answers, grinning.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Sam reaches up and brushes Josh’s hair away from his forehead, holds his hand to the side of Josh’s face. “I love you, too, Josh.”

Josh smiles and Sam can taste it when he kisses him.

_And I fall into the stars, into your arms, into love all over again._

**Author's Note:**

> Each section title comes from a song:  
>  one and title   
>  two   
>  three   
>  four   
>  five   
>  six   
> Each song is from the fantastic samjosh playlist  i was following you  by ao3 user iwasfollowing you. Thank you for the inspiration.  
> Finally, thank you to my beta Luka and my partners Becca and Sam for dealing with my shit nonstop (especially my constant screaming about Josh Lyman's hair). I couldn't do it without you three.


End file.
